


wishful thinking

by Anonymous



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alcohol, Allergies, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Marriage Proposal, One Shot, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Social Media, Yelp Reviews, bar trivia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23622133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A collection of (lengthy) Reddie drabbles from prompts on twitter! Not really edited, just for fun.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 29
Kudos: 146
Collections: Anonymous





	1. richie/eddie, meet-cute via yelp reviews

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "richie is terrible at cooking and always orders takeout. he falls a little in love with the guy who leaves the most scathing and hilarious yelp reviews (spoiler it’s eddie)"

**Eddie K.** | 5/3/19 5:17 pm  
Brooklyn, NY  
1 Star

FOOD ARRIVED COLD TERRIBLE WILL NEVER ORDER AGAIN

 **Richie T.** | 5/3/19 8:03 pm  
Brooklyn, NY  
5 Stars

really good food nice and hot :)

**Eddie K.** | 5/11/19 6:22 pm  
Brooklyn, NY  
1 Star

STILL LOOKED WEIRD I ATE IT THIS TIME AND IT WAS TOO SALTY  
**Previous Review** : PASTA LOOKED WEIRD

 **Richie T.** | 5/11/19 8:31 pm  
Brooklyn, NY  
5 Stars

most aesthetically pleasing pasta ive seen could be saltier but was a normal amt of salt neway

**Eddie K.** | 6/2/19 8:12 pm  
Brooklyn, NY  
1 Star

waited 45 minutes because DRIVER “””STUCK IN TRAFFIC”” THERE ARE MANY SIDE STREETS TO TAKE TO AVOID THIS PROBLEM. PROBABLY WOULD STILL BE HERE WAITING IF I DIDNT THREATEN TO CALL THE POLICE !

 **Richie T.** | 6/2/19 9:30 pm  
Brooklyn, NY  
5 Stars

food arrived before i even hung up the phone. no idea how thats possible but it was awesome. maybe drivers can use time warps, thats cool

**Eddie K.** | 6/13/19 8:04 pm  
Brooklyn, NY  
1 Star

WAITER LOOKED AT ME WEIRDLY NOT VERY NICE THIGN TO DO TO A CUSTOMER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
EDIT: PLEASE DISREGARD REVIEW THAT WILL PROBABLY COME AFTER ME I AM BEING HARASSED

 **Richie T.** | 6/13/19 8:44 pm  
Brooklyn, NY  
5 Stars

waiter looked at me and said sir u are very handsome. im saying ths in a respectful way, not a creepy way. you look like your very smart and you have ur life together too, and are kind to animals

**Eddie K.** | 6/29/19 7:17 pm  
Brooklyn, NY  
1 Star

FROZEN YOGURT NOT FROZEN REALLY. SHOULD BE CALLED LUKEWARM YOGURT INSTEAD  
EDIT: PLEASE DISREGARD REVIEW THAT WILL PROBABLY COME AFTER ME I AM BEING INTERNET STALKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 **Richie T.** | 6/29/19 8:05 pm  
Brooklyn, NY  
5 Stars

yogurt was so cold burnt my tongue off. thats on me though i told them to make it a little more frozen than they suualy do and they were like but sir we make it an optimal degree of frozen if we freeze it more itll be SUPER frozen but i was like no., this is wat i want

**Eddie K.** | 9/22/19 7:03 pm  
Brooklyn, NY  
5 Stars

KITCHEN VERY KIND AND ACCOMMODATING OF SEVERAL ALLERGIES & INTOLERANCES

 **Richie T.** | 9/23/19 5:12 pm  
Brooklyn, NY  
5 Stars

u allergic to sausage?

 **Eddie K.** | 9/23/19 5:33 pm  
Brooklyn, NY  
1/2 Star

WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU LIVE

* * *

“Who the fuck do you think you are,” Eddie K., of Brooklyn, New York, hisses, stiff with tension, shoulders up to his ears. Richie blinks down at him, delighted. 

“You really came! Wow,” he says.

“Of course I came,” Eddie snaps, beginning to pace in front of him, although he keeps his attention zeroed in on Richie. “Where the _fuck_ do you get off.” _Fuck_ is punctuated with a little karate chop in the air; Richie is delighted to note that he’s as cute as he’d looked in his blurry picture.

“I don’t know. I was just messing with you, I guess. I thought it was funny?”

“It’s _so_ not funny,” Eddie growls. “No one’s taking my reviews seriously because of your bullshit. Yelp reviews are an _important_ function of our modern society, it’s like, democracy in action. For restaurants. Like, oh, so funny for _you_ , but _not_ funny for the next person who—like me—likes to ensure that the place that they’ll be ordering from maintains a certain standard of quality and decides to check the Yelp reviews in advance—”

“Okay! Okay,” Richie says, hands up in surrender, fighting the urge to laugh. “You’ve showed me the error of my ways. I’ll stop it, and I’m very sorry.”

This isn’t the answer that Eddie had expected, clearly. He’d looked like he was gearing himself up for a physical fight. Coming to a halt in front of him, Eddie regards him warily. “Really?”

“Yeah. Scout’s honor.”

“Well. Uh, okay. Good,” Eddie says, awkwardly, scratching at the back of his neck; a pause stretches out between them before Eddie ventures on. “I know who you are, you know. You’re that comedian. I thought it was just someone using your picture.”

That’s a surprise; not an unwelcome one, but a surprise nonetheless. Eddie—with his sixty-odd furious yelp reviews—doesn’t seem like he’d be a fan of comedy. “Uh, yeah. It’s me. Richie Tozier, in the flesh.”

“You’re pretty funny. Sometimes,” Eddie says, begrudgingly. “Not always.”

"Thanks?” Richie says, and Richie’s eyes flick behind him. 

“You ordered from Dishoom?” he asks, and Richie realizes he’s looking at the kitchen table and the takeout bags sitting on top of it; Richie had actually just ordered, coincidentally, before Eddie had turned up to accost him. He’d never really learned how to cook—never really _had_ to, financially, so he’d never bothered. He’d been happy to subsist on instant ramen until he’d started earning enough to eat out every night, so really, when he’d started to order takeout, that had been the _healthier_ choice.

“Yeah,” Richie says, a little surprised, until he remembers—right. The name on the bags.

“That place is really good, actually,” Eddie says. It’s true. Richie can smell it from where he stands, actually, fragrant and mouth-watering; chicken berry biryani and mattar paneer and garlic naan.

“Yeah,” Richie says, and an idea occurs to him. It’s probably a bad one, but Richie has bad ideas all the time—and in many ways, he’s a creature of habit. He rubs at the back of his neck. “Listen, do you, uh. Do you want to have some with me? I ordered way too much. I promise I’m not an axe murderer. Let’s say it’s, like, my Yelp peace offering, or whatever.”

Eddie looks surprised, and at first Richie thinks that he’ll reject him outright—and well, then at least he tried. But something else happens. It’s like Richie can see Eddie argue with himself, in his head, until finally, for the first time, he relaxes, the tension leaking from his shoulders as he straightens. “Well, okay,” he ventures, finally, and Richie grins. “A little bit. If it’s hot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on twitter at @foxglovves!


	2. richie/eddie, outsider perspective

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "The first time anyone who knew Eddie pre Derry 2 meets Richie?"

Josh peers at the grapefruit tree hunched over the ramshackle fence that cordons Delta Theta’s property off from Mr. Kaspbrak’s with a palpable sense of dread and a profound, distinct terror. 

Three years in their current frat house, after they’d destroyed the last one in an Orbeez prank gone wrong; three summers next to the world’s worst uptight neighbor. It’s his vacation home, technically, which means that they only have to deal with him–more or less–two months out of the year, but what a two months it always is–two months of noise violation complaints, two months of hastily shutting off all the lights and the house music and sitting there in the dark as Kaspbrak pounded on the door and informed them, not kindly, that it was eleven PM and he  _ knew _ they were in there and he was going to have them all arrested, tried, and put into jail for at least ten years.

The issue, presently, is Mr. Kaspbrak’s grapefruit tree. They’ve put it off as long as they could, but it’s become time, finally, to address the problem; specifically, the tree is heavy with fruit, and leaves something of a mess on their side of the property when the grapefruits fall and rot in the grass. Flies, everything. Last night, they’d played a game of beer pong to determine who, exactly, would have the privilege of going next door and confronting Mr. Kaspbrak over it, and Josh sucks at beer pong, so he’d lost.

It takes every bit of bravery and an entire can of White Claw at eleven thirty in the morning in order to muster up the nerve to march over to Mr. Kaspbrak’s door and ring the bell, but Josh manages it, somehow. He’ll be nice, he thinks, as he rings the doorbell. They’ll keep this really lowkey, and–

–the door cracks, and then opens, and it isn’t Mr. Kaspbrak at all. In fact, it’s a famous comedian.  _ Richie Tozier.  _

“Woah,” Josh says, boggling at him. Tozier smiles at him politely. 

“What’s up?” he asks, after a silence. It’s totally him, Josh thinks. Trashmouth. He’d watched his Netflix special last week, the one from five or six years ago; it had been really funny. He wonders–with a mounting hope–if Mr. Kaspbrak had moved out, but he doesn’t think so, actually, now that he really considers it. He’d seen him bring some groceries in three days ago, in fact. 

“You’re Richie Tozier,” Josh points out. 

Tozier scratches at his chin, like he’s thinking it over. “I guess so.”

“This your house?” Josh ventures, still perplexed. 

“Me and my husband, yeah.”

“Husband…” Josh echoes, slowly, thinking about the tail end of Tozier’s special, the bit structured around the five of his ex girlfriends he’d puked on (by accident). His confusion, apparently, is visibly evident, because Tozier forges on to clarify. 

“Oh. I’m gay now,” Tozier explains. “Or, I mean. Always gay. But gay in public now.”

“Oh, word. Nice,” Josh says, not sure what else to say, although there’s still one issue in particular in desperate need of clarification. “Like...gay with Mr. Kaspbrak gay?”

Tozier blinks. “Yeah,” he says. “Actually. You could put it that way.”

“Nice,” Josh says, still trying to wrap his head around it. Not Tozier being gay, really (Trent, his roommate, is half gay, because he dates girls, sometimes, and he’s cool) but the concept of Tozier and  _ Mr. Kaspbrak  _ together. Mr. Kasprak–the little angry guy who’d lectured him on how to sort out his recyclables for thirty-five minutes–and Richie Tozier, who he’d just seen do a bit on his favorite states to do coke in. 

But, even so, there’s the matter at hand to focus on. Unsure of what else to do, Josh leads him to his side of the property, and shows him the grapefruit in the grass–the way that they draw the buzzing flies in droves. 

“So that’s kind of not cool, you know?” Josh explains. “It gets all gross.”

“Yeah,” Tozier says slowly. “We can cut this branch down–it’s just the one that goes over the fence, so that should do it. If it keeps happening after that let me know.”

“Awesome,” says Josh, happily. He couldn’t have dreamed that this would go that easily; none of his brothers are going to  _ believe _ him. Emboldened by his success, maybe, he hesitates, before forging on. “Do you think you could, like. Get him to chill out a little?”

Surprised, Tozier glances over to him. “Eddie?”

It’s hard to think of him as an Eddie, but that’s him; his mailbox reads  _ EDWARD KASPBRAK (NO SOLICITATIONS PLEASE!!!!!!!!!) _ . Josh nods, a little uncertain. “Yeah.”

Tozier, though, doesn’t take offense; in fact he grins, fondly, and Josh knows that look–he’s seen it on Tanner, who’s been dating his girl from high school  _ forever _ (like, five years). Tozier is in  _ love _ . With Mr. Kaspbrak. It’s crazy.

“I’ll try to get him to chill out,” Tozier says, finally. “He’s pretty intense, I know.”

“Thanks,” Josh says, relieved. “We’re having a rager on Sunday, so.”

“The Lord’s day,” says Tozier, solemnly, and Josh laughs. 

“Do you want to come?” he asks, after a pause, on impulse, although he hesitates after a second. He doesn’t want to be rude. Not to a celebrity, at least. “He can come, too,” he adds reluctantly. “Mr. K. If he wants.”

“I think we’re good,” Tozier says, with a half smile. But thanks. I’ll tell him you invited him, he’ll be really flattered.” Josh isn’t so sure about that, but it’s a nice thing for Tozier to say, and he actually, he hopes so. Tozier’s already started to make his way back to his house with a wave–but he pauses to call something back to him. “Don’t drink too much. You’ll end up like me.”

“Gay?” Josh asks, bewildered.

“No, I mean, like. It’ll fuck up your liver.”

“Oh, shit.” Josh peers down at his front, like he’d be able to see it through his clothes. If that’s where his liver is, his front. He has no idea, truthfully; they haven’t talked about livers in his intro to sports medicine class, at least. “Good to know,” he calls as he looks back up, but Tozier’s already gone. 

And that’s that. Grapefruit problem: solved. Kaspbrak problem: handled. Famous comedian: befriended. Josh is pretty sure that it’s been the best morning of his entire summer, and energized by such a successful encounter, he jogs back into the house.

“Dude,” Josh hollers, as soon as the door slams behind him, startling a groan from Trey as he sleeps off his hangover on the couch. “You’re never gonna  _ believe _ who Kaspbrak is banging.”


	3. richie/eddie, getting married straight after derry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "AU where Richie and Eddie run away from Derry together and get MARRIED."

They come back to Derry like the tide, the summers after college, and something’s always different when they do–it always takes a week for Eddie to remember that he loves Richie, and they don’t talk about it, but he’s pretty sure that the same thing happens to Richie, too. It’s the distance, he figures, the shock of the time apart; they’re together  _ always _ in Derry, because they have to be. Richie is the only friend he’s had here, the only person who likes him at all, as long as he can remember, and that’s a stroke of luck, because Eddie likes Richie more than he’s liked anyone. And he doesn’t like to admit this, since Richie has enough of an ego already, but he’s pretty sure he knows it anyway. 

When they graduate, they leave for Bangor in the middle of the night, once Eddie’s mom has had her sleeping pill, and they have to pull over twice on the way so that Eddie can vomit from nervousness. Richie’s college roommate has an older sister there with an empty room for rent in her two bedroom apartment, and that’s their point B–Eddie’s never seen it, but Richie reassures him, cheerfully, that he’ll hate it. 

They wind up at a particular sort of bar that night, leaving Richie’s car out there on the street, stuffed full with mostly Eddie’s things, and a few of his own. Within ten minutes, Richie (who will strike up a conversation with just about anything, living or inanimate) is engrossed in a conversation with the bartender, an older guy with graying hair and a neat beard.

“I used to be a paralegal,” the bartender explains. “This is, like. My retirement thing. Just for fun. Useful, sometimes, actually–I’m still a notary public, so if you need a signoff on a will or something, or if you want to get married…”

“This tastes like rubbing alcohol,” Eddie mutters into his gin and tonic, still sore over how much he’s just paid to drink something that feels like a punishment. Maybe he’s just not used to it. He’d missed out on the drinking part of his college experience, more or less–Richie, he’s sure, made up for that all on his own, between the two of them. Eddie’s never been to a gay bar like this, period. 

“So you could marry  _ us _ , right here?” Richie asks loudly, tipsy and in good spirits from their trip today. He doesn’t wait for an answer; he nudges Eddie, half leaning against him in a way that nearly makes Eddie spill his drink. “Wanna do it?” he asks, with a broad smile. 

“I can’t marry you,” Eddie points out, shaking off the bit of drink that had spilled on his hand irritably. “It’s illegal.”

Richie’s face goes serious. “Eddie, I’ve been meaning to tell you this,” he says, gently. “Your mother and I–we aren’t  _ actually  _ married. I’ve been stringing her along. But listen, you’ll  _ always _ be like a son to–”

“Don’t be disgusting,” Eddie groans, too exhausted to really put his heart into a  _ beep beep, Richie _ . He takes another swallow of his drink, and when he’s finished, Richie’s still looking at him. “What?” he asks. 

“Would you want to? Marry me. If you could,” Richie says–and there’s lightness in his tone, like this is all a joke, but it’s  _ heavy _ , forced, and he studies Eddie with a cautiousness in his face that makes him look younger than he already is. Vulnerable. 

Eddie hesitates; conscious, suddenly, of the need to take great care of Richie, in how he answers this. Of how much he  _ wants _ to take great care of Richie, in general, especially like this, especially now. “I would. I think,” Eddie says, and that gives him the courage to forge on. “I  _ will _ . If we ever can.”

Richie grins, in the way that he does when he’s joyful, in the way that takes up most of his face, like when Eddie gets off a good one. The bartender, who had been carefully drying shotglasses, a little  _ too _ deliberately, finally returns his attention to the two of them. 

“Well, sure,” he says, with a certain carelessness. “I now pronounce you married, under the laws of Maine. There you go.”

“We don’t have rings,” Eddie says, and maybe it’s the gin and tonic that makes  _ that _ feel like as much of a problem as does, but his eyes fall upon the paper from his drinking straw, discarded on the table in front of them, more or less in one piece. “Look.”

Determined to do this right, he picks it up, setting his drink down, and takes Richie’s hand and splays his fingers. He ties a neat knot around his ring finger, just about as securely as he can do it, for fear of breaking it into pieces. 

“There,” Eddie says, firmly. It’s not perfect, but it’s something. “I’m supposed to kiss you now–” he says, or begins to say, because Richie is already leaning in and kissing him. 

It’s brief, but it’s with a tenderness that makes Eddie finish off the rest of his drink in one go when Richie pulls back, dizzy with equal parts pleasure and embarrassment. The bar is thick with people–raucous, dark, loud, sticky from everything that’s been spilt on the floor over the years, but in that moment, it feels like the two of them are there alone, cocooned away from the rest of the world. Eddie smiles, light-headed from his disgusting drink, stupid and happy. 

“If this apartment sucks, I’m going to divorce you,” he says. “I mean it.”

“Bad news. Gay divorce is illegal too, technically,” Richie says, sliding his hand over to Eddie’s, the one with the paper ring; it scratches against the back of his knuckles as he settles it over Eddie’s hand. “I’m pretty sure that means you’re stuck with me.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "eddie has a nice day being alive and doing alive things"

“I want to eat a cashew,” Eddie says, loudly. Richie cracks an eye open.

“Eddie,” he mumbles blearily, his voice muffled from underneath the pillow half shoved over his face. “It’s seven AM.” 

“I overslept,” Eddie sighs, chagrined as he bends to lace up his running shoes tightly. “Get cashews if you’re going to the store.” 

Eddie’s done by eight thirty, and Richie’s still sleeping, so he winds up going to the store himself, anyway. When he gets back, Richie’s in the shower; twenty or so minutes later, the two of them sit out on the patio, three cashews sitting between them on a napkin. The two of them look at it warily, like it’s a loaded gun.

“So, what am I supposed to be looking out for?” Richie sighs, glancing over to the Epi-Pen next to it on the table. “I don’t know how to use this thing, fair warning. Like, not even vaguely.”

“What the fuck?” Eddie stares at him. “Everyone knows how to use an Epi-Pen.”

“Your belief in my general base of knowledge is heartwarming–really, Eddie–you do realize you’re speaking to a man who only knows his own social security number  _ sort of _ .”

At that, Eddie shudders, pinching at the bridge of his nose. “I can’t discuss that with you right now,” he says, tersely–and returns his attention to the cashews in front of them determinedly. “I’m going to do it.”

It’s Richie’s turn to look concerned, now, and he hesitates, picking up the Epi-Pen to fiddle with with nervously. “Shouldn’t we, like. Be doing this with some kind of doctor? An allergist? What if this kills you?”

Eddie gives Richie a look. “Tell Bill I love him,” he says, with grave determination–and that startles a laugh from Richie as Eddie reaches out to pick up a single cashew and eats it, just like that.

He chews, considering the taste of it, as Richie watches him carefully, the smile half-faded from his face. Eddie takes his time with it; he’s never had a cashew, all his life, which leads him to wonder how and why his mother had worked out that he’d been allergic to them, but–he wonders lots of things about his mother, now. 

He swallows, and gives himself a second or two to think it over. “You know–I feel fine, but they’re not that great,” he says, slowly.

“That’s because you got the unsalted kind,” Richie says, with a touch of exasperation, as he turns the tin of cashews over to look at it. “What the fuck. Here.”

Richie takes the pink salt grinder and one of the cashews in hand and gives it a grind or two to salt it before passing it over to Eddie, who pops it obediently into his mouth. 

“That’s a little better,” Eddie admits. “It’s pretty good, actually.”

“There you go.” 

Eddie swallows, and stares at Richie; it takes a few seconds for the exasperation to settle over his face. “ _ I _ know your social security number. Do you realize that? It’s nine numbers, Richie.”


	5. richie/eddie, instagram boyfriend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "instagram boyfriend eddie kaspbrak ??"

“I’m not taking a photo of that,” Eddie says with a frown, peering at Richie clutching at the skateboard in his hands with an air of disdain and resignation. 

“No! C’mon,” Richie protests, dropping the skateboard to the ground and giving it an experimental toe forwards. “It’s going to be really cool.”

“It’s not going to be cool!” Eddie points out. “You’re forty.”

Richie looks wounded; not too wounded, though, because he takes a swig of his beer before pointing it at Eddie, accusatory. “What, you can’t be cool when you’re forty?”

Eddie squints. “Not really. You weren’t cool when you were fifteen, either, so you started at a deficit, which doesn’t help.”

“Eddie,” Richie sighs, setting the beer down behind him. “Light of my life.  _ Darling _ boy. Take the photo, please.” 

“You’re going to break your ankle,” Eddie sighs. “And I’m going to say I told you so. Okay.  _ Go _ .” 

Eddie takes the photo—rather, he ends up having to take a few, because it takes Richie three or four attempts to get the trick right. Although he doesn’t break his ankle, he does scrape his knees up, much to Eddie’s alarm. 

The two of them are so absorbed in the resultant picture that they miss the photo that Ben takes of them entirely—in fact, the first time Richie is aware of it is when he sees it on Instagram the next day: Eddie, phone in hand, gesturing animatedly at the terrible photo he’d taken; Richie, scraped knees and all—the bandaids that Eddie had fished out of his wallet haphazardly applied. He has his arm threaded around Eddie’s shoulders; he’s pressing a kiss to his forehead with a half smile. 


	6. reddie proposal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "one of them proposing to the other!!"

They peel off from the bar pair by pair. Ben is fading by ten, and Beverly ducks out with him; Bill’s Mike’s designated driver, and the rest of them are treated to the sight of all 5’7” of Bill steering all 6’4” of Mike, draped over him, down the street to where they’re parked with a grave determination. Stan and Patty are the last stragglers, and as the best at bar trivia out of all of them, are determined to see their team’s victory through to the bonus round, effortlessly fending off Richie and Eddie’s inadvertent attempts to run interference by way of shouting out wrong answers—Richie, because he wants to say the  _ funniest _ thing, not the most correct thing, and Eddie, who has a fervent and unceasing belief that the winner of bar trivia is determined by who can say the first thing that comes to mind, right or wrong, the loudest. 

(E.G., in the case of how Darth Vader plans to capture Luke Skywalker:

Eddie, shouting: “THE DEATH STAR!”

Richie, to his own great amusement: “With a lasso!”)

When they wave goodbye to Stan and Patty, Eddie is drunk, and Richie is somewhere within the vicinity of drunkness, but neither of them are  _ staggering _ drunk, so they meander down the street in the direction of the F train instead, slowly but steadily. 

“Are you ready for dinner on Sunday?” Eddie asks, suddenly, 

“What?” Richie says distractedly. “Yeah.” Delmonico’s—an  _ Eddie _ kind of place, nothing too flashy, nothing that would reinvent the wheel, painfully old-school. Fancier than they’re usually used to, though. With a heavy heart, Richie is pretty sure he’ll have to wear a sport coat. 

“ _ Yeah _ , but like. Are you  _ ready _ ,” Eddie says deliberately, leaning into the  _ ready _ , and leaning in to Richie at the same time, loosely wrapping an arm around his for balance. “For  _ dinner _ . On…”

Eddie lapses into silence; either he’s gotten distracted, or he can’t remember. “Sunday,” Richie supplies. 

“Yes!”

“Why are you asking me two times?”

“It’s not just a dinner,” Eddie says, smugly. “I’m going to ask you something.”

Richie squints, and runs a few calculations through his head before speaking. “Are you going to propose to me?”

This comes as a tremendous shock to Eddie, so much so that he nearly falls over, stumbling over his own feet. “What!” Eddie gasps, clutching at Richie to keep himself upright. “How did you—I didn’t say that!”

“Yeah, but like, what the fuck else would you be gearing up to  _ ask _ me about, how you think we should do the backsplash when we remodel the kitchen?” Richie groans. “I mean, actually— look,  _ nevermind _ , the point is, you can’t, Eddie.” 

In a flash, Eddie looks crestfallen—and  _ god _ , Eddie might be history’s worst bar trivia competitor, but at wounded looks, he’s a world champion. Eighty-five percent eyes, at least. “No!” Richie adds, hastily. “Eddie, Eddie, it’s— _ I’m _ proposing to you. On Thursday.”

Eddie stares. 

“But you have your comedy show Thursday,” he says slowly. Richie stares back, and comprehension begins to dawn on Eddie’s face. “ _ Nooooo _ ,” he moans, breaking off from Richie to clutch at his temples. “Do  _ not _ do the fucking onstage proposal thing, I will  _ leave _ , I swear to god, Richie—”

“Okay!” Richie says hastily, holding his hands up in submission. “Okay. Listen. Look. I can fix this.” 

A pace or two away from Richie, Eddie stops in his tracks, eyeing him warily. “How?

“I’m gonna do it now,” Richie explains, distractedly—determined, now, as he rummages through his pockets. 

“ _ Richie _ ,” Eddie hisses, glancing around them, down the mostly-empty street, red-faced, but Richie’s  _ doing _ this, he’s set on it. It’s fate, probably, that he’d gotten it resized today; it’s  _ destiny _ that he has the ring in his pocket now, it’s a miracle that he hadn’t lost it at the bar tonight, as he loses most things. Box in hand, he kneels in front of Eddie, right there on the sidewalk. 

“Edward Kaspbrak,” Richie begins.“I’ve loved you all my life—as long as I can remember—even when I  _ couldn’t _ remember. Do you...will you…” He’d worked this all out in his head; he’d had a whole speech and everything, but now that he thinks about it, light-headed from drinking, he remembers that it had tied into a bit, and also he can’t quite remember the rest of it out of context, and he’s forty—he’s  _ old _ —about twenty years past capable of delivering an entire bit on his knees in the hopes that that’ll trigger his memory. Eddie, he decides, will have to settle for the easy version. “I want you to marry me. Yes?”

“This is so stupid,” Eddie groans. “Obviously,  _ logically _ , if I was going to propose to you—”

“Okay! Okay,” Richie laughs, catching Eddie by a wrist, urging him back in close. “Just say yes. C’mon, we’ve got to do this the right way—” 

“ _ Yes _ ,” Eddie interjects, before he can finish, bright-eyed, flushed from drinking, or love, maybe, alive and happy, beautiful. Richie loves him, too. “ _ Yes _ . You’re so annoying, Richie, I’m going to kill you.”

And Richie doesn’t have the time to rattle off a rejoinder to that, because Eddie pulls him up, and it’s not to kill him, it’s to kiss him—tenderly and awkwardly, Eddie grinning into the kiss, cupping his face in his hands, Richie half up from his knees, clutching the little velvet ring box, blue velvet. 

When Eddie breaks the kiss, and Richie straightens, Eddie lets him put the ring on his finger, and holds it up to peer at it in the dim glow from the streetlamps. 

“I’m still gonna do it on Sunday,” he declares, firmly. “I’m going to pretend this didn’t happen.”

“They’re going to think I’m a homewrecker if you keep the ring on when you do it,” Richie points out, slinging an arm around his shoulders as they begin to walk again. 

“Or they’ll think I’m a polygamist,” Eddie muses. “Like the Mormons.”

“That’s just on TV, I think,” Richie says, which kicks off another argument, passionate and heated, all the way to the subway, and then three stops later. 

Which, really, is fine. They have the time. 


End file.
